Resist urge to get inside Lady Liberty's head

The new Secretary of the Interior visited the Statue of Liberty last week at the behest of members of Congress who want him to reopen access to the monument's crown. It's a bad idea.

The last day the crown was open was Sept. 10, 2001. It never opened the day of the World Trade Center attacks and, while Liberty Island was reopened to visitors after 100 days and the statue's pedestal opened again in 2004, access to the crown itself remains denied. (The highest point, Liberty's torch, has been closed to the public since 1916, when it was damaged by sabotage at a nearby ammo dump during World War I.)

Lady Liberty is, after all, a statue. No one goes to the Lincoln Memorial and expects to go inside Abe and, while Liberty is of course vastly bigger, its inside was not intended for visits either. Sculptor Frederic Bartholdi and engineer Gustave Eiffel, of tower fame, did include an ingenious internal double-helix of small, metal steps - 162 up, 162 down - but they were intended only for maintenance. They still are used regularly as intended.

Liberty was not much of a tourist attraction for a long while after her dedication in 1886. She was co-opted almost immediately as a lighthouse, unsuccessfully, but remained for years admired only from afar. It was after the statue was widely used to market war bonds during the two world wars that Liberty became a tourist attraction and visitors lined up to climb inside. Today, even without her crown open, the monument can attract more than 10,000 people a day.

Those who have been to the small observation deck in the crown recall waiting as long as five hours to get there. There has never been an elevator in the statue itself, though an elevator up through most of the pedestal was installed during the 1980's restoration. Visitors remember being hot and crowded as they stood back to front to slowly climb the narrow steps. At the top, they could stay only briefly due to the press of the crowd behind them. And the view is disappointing, because the windows in the crown are small and the statue faces east - not north to the Manhattan skyline.

But the National Park Service, which manages the statue, did not close her crown for these reasons or for fear of terrorism. The statue may be one of the best protected structures in the world. Even limited access to the monument today requires visitors to go through airport-level security twice, as well as other even more sophisticated scanners.

The crown was closed for public safety. In fact, the Park Service had been looking to shut the statue for years before 9/11. The inside meets no fire or safety codes. There is only one way out, which violates all fire safety standards, and that single way could be blocked by hundreds of people scrambling to escape. The Park Service provides first aid at all times and keeps rescue equipment in the chamber at the top of the pedestal. But when the crown was open, rescuers had to fight their way up and down packed spiral stairways any time anyone complained of chest pain or vertigo. It happened often.

At best, access to the crown would have to be very strictly controlled. One option, a lottery system, would obviously disappoint far more people than it would satisfy. Any kind of entrance fee would violate the spirit in which the statue was given by the people of France and in which she has stood for 122 years. (Entrance to Liberty Island and the pedestal is free. A private ferry company pays the Park Service a share of boat ticket sales.)

Secretary Ken Salazar would be much better advised to secure more stable and sufficient funds to maintain the statue. Parts of the statue and its grounds are worn. Signs and other interpretive aids are inadequate or broken. Visitors frequently complain about filthy restrooms and garbage cans reek in the summer heat. The pedestal elevator is often out of order. Parts of the island unseen by visitors are little better than junk heaps.

In a vastly changed world, where visitors to great symbols of liberty are required to take off their shoes and belts, it's odd to even reconsider opening the statue. Of course that's tragic. (I was up there as an eight-year-old boy and cherish the memory. I also walked freely onto airliners and into parts of the White House.)

Lady Liberty maginificently has done her job of welcoming new Americans and visitors for a long, long time. Despite the understandable intentions of some in Congress, the new secretary should let her be.

Bob McHugh was a seasonal U.S. Park Ranger at the Statue of Liberty last year.